Sudden Swallowtail Death

[NanoCrazed]

Stump. So hoping someone here has thoughts \ suggestions...

I had 3 female and 1 male swallowtails in one of my tanks. But literally went to bed for 3 hours and woke up to find 2 of the females dead.

Things I did right before heading to bed was cleaning up the tank (disturbing the top layer of the sand bed), removing the carbon and dosing for ich (tang has ich, what else is new) with a herbal formula that I've used before.

Everything else seems normal. What am I missing?

If all my swallowtails died or only 1 I would just write it off to the treatment but two dying in the same time period of hours just doesn't seem like a coincidence.

 

[Bruce Spiegelman]

Test ammonia.

 

[scuzy]

Maybe flukes? Were these new? Also don't dose that herbal stuff is useless and causes water parameter issues.


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[rygh]

My bet would be ich killed them.
ich does not often show, but can be in the gills.
If one fish is showing signs of ich, other fish almost certainly have it.

One one goes, you get an ammonia spike, which can kill the other if
it was close to death.

Herbal remedies do nothing. Total rip off.

Disturbing the sand bed probably increased ammonia a bit also, but very unlikely
to be the direct cause unless you have a really deep sand bed that has not
been touched in years.

Only other thought would be that they were in a brutal fight with each other. Does happen.